by R V Smith
The mahant of Kunti Devi temple claims to be its hereditary priest. The 108th mahant, Pandit Ghasiram Bhardwaj, renovated the temple in 1915. The present pujari is his descendant whose claim of residential rights was rejected by the High Court but which, however, allows him to continue his daily puja in the mandir as he used to.
The Bhardwajs could have been ministering at the temple almost since the time of the Mahabharat. They take their name from Rishi Bhardwaj (son of the planetary ruler Brahaspati and father of Dronacharya, the great warrior-guru) of the Ramayana and Mahabharat times. Isn’t it exciting to know that such a long tradition has been continuing at the Purana Qila which, in its present form owes its inception to Humyaun, the second Mughal ruler, who named his fort Dinpanah which was built at the site of the Pandava citadel. The fort was rebuilt by Sher Shah Suri after he defeated Humayun but the ousted ruler returned to recapture Delhi after spending fifteen years in exile in Persia. He died a few months later after a fall from the steps of the Sher Mandal in the fort, which remained in control of his descendants till the time of Akbar Shah II, father of Bahadur Shah Zafar, who unfortunately had control only over the Red Fort.
So when you see the Purana Qila next try to remember that it is not only linked to the Mahabharat but also in a way to the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epics written at about the very time the fort took shape in brick and mortar. The temple of Kunti and its mahant of course, are there to lend credence to the events of long, long ago. Surely Purana Qila in word and deed.
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Evenings at Mausiqi Manzil
esteryear evenings at Mausiqi Manzil in Suiwalan are now the stuff of legends that still continue to haunt old timers. Like Mausiqi Manzil, there was a Tansukh Manzil in Chandni Mahal, but it has not survived. In Kucha Pandit is Ali Manzil, where the late President Fakruddin Ali Ahmed’s sister used to stay. The family also owned Hamdard Manzil in Lal Kuan. Dr A. Ali of Hamdard University recalls that there were two Tard palm trees in Ali Manzil, one of which got uprooted in a storm. His recollection, however, is that Ahmed Ali wrote Twilight in Delhi at Ali Manzil and the description of the house of the novel’s hero, Mir Nihal, was actually based on it.
Mausiqi Manzil, that predated the Urdu Ghar built by Khwaja Hasan Nizami in Macchliwalan (fish market) of Jama Masjid, came up during the reign of Akbar Shah Sani about the time that ‘Phool Walon ki Sair’ was started to mark the return of his son Prince Jahangir from exile in Allahabad, after being pardoned by the British for firing at their resident, Seton at the Red Fort. The present occupant of Mausiqi Manzil, Ustad Iqbal Ahmed Khan is away on his annual lecture visit to the USA, but an old Delhiwalah, Haji Faiyazuddin, remembers that Iqbal Sahib’s grandfather, Ustad Chand Khan and his brothers, Usman Khan and Jahan Khan were regular visitors to Haji Hotel, opposite the Jama Masjid. They were friends of Faiyazuddin’s father, Haji Zahooruddin who often attended the music programmes at Mausiqi Manzil. Chand Khan was a celebrated classical singer of medium height and build, fond of eating paan and good food. His close companions included Ustad Sadiq Ali Khan of Rampur, the been player at the court of the Nawab there, and Hafiz Ali Khan, father of Ustad Ajmad Ali Khan, who used to come from Gwalior to regale the audience with his sarod recital. Also from that place came Ustad Nissar Ahmed Khan, and from Lahore Bade Ghulam Ali Khan who sang the lilting raga for Salim and Anarkali on a romantic night at Fatehpur Sikri in the film Mughal-e-Azam.
When the Rajwadas or States ruled by the princes and nawabs were merged into the Indian Union by Sardar Patel, classical singers attached to those courts lost their patrons and as a result their monthly income. Then Naina Devi, with the help of Jawaharlal Nehru, set up the Bharatiya Kala Kendra at Pusa Road, which later moved to Mandi House. The Kendra became a good meeting place for the dislodged singers. It continues to remain such a platform even now.
Haji Mian, who heard Ustad Chand Khan sing, says that he was born at about the same time as Nehru and traced his descent from a family of musicians who sang at the court of Altamash, successor of Qutubuddin Aibak, the first ruler of the Slave dynasty and earlier regent of Mohammad Ghori. By that contention the original Mausiqi Manzil of the ancestors of Chand Khan must have been in Mehrauli, from where Altamash and his successors ruled. It moved to Shahjanabad some 500 years later.
Imagine the stern Altamash or Illtutmish, who left his kingdom not to his sons but daughter Razia Sultan, listening to the classical Khan singers and sometimes swaying to the taan and the taap, forgetting the cares of State and the many problems that beset him, including the invasion of Changez Khan and his Mongol hordes. But luckily they passed like a storm through Punjab and Altamash did not have to face them. It is interesting to note that the grave of Razia and her sister Sazia behind Turkman Gate are not far from Mausiqi Manzil. What a link (by coincidence) with medieval times when the fortunes of the ancestors of Chand Khan were still in their formative stage!
Listening to a soiree at Mausiqi Manzil, when the rains had cooled Delhi, and the intoxicating sawan breezes were merging with the mesmerizing voice of Chand Khan, was a treat that the surviving oldies have not yet forgotten. Following up, his brothers, Usman Khan and Jahan Khan, sang one after the other to make the soiree a heady mix of classical and neo-classical nuggets. Such programmes attracted the cream of society then and the hoi polloi had to be content with the fast-emerging musical films that resounded to the magical voice of Sehgal, himself an occasional visitor to Mausiqi Manzil. Gohar Jan, however, had ended her career by then, but Begum Akhtar often sang there since she was a disciple of Chand Khan. Mausiqi Manzil now is in a dilapidated condition, though students of music continue to be trained there, with makeshift boarding and lodging arrangements, thanks to Ustad Iqbal Khan and his affectionate begum. The present scion, who has spread the fame of his Delhi Gharana abroad, still holds a ten-day programme in the month of Muharram as part of the family tradition. Next time if you happen to pass by Mausiqi Manzil on a pleasant evening, don’t be surprised to hear heavenly taans emanating from it, for after all it is Delhi’s fabled ‘House of Music’!
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Facelift for the ‘Mina bazaar’
ews that the Chhatta Chowk of the Red Fort may get back its original vaulted roof will gladden history lovers. The chowk was designed by Shah Jahan after the Mina Bazaar of the Agra Fort, though some historians may differ in opinion. But be that as it may, a ramshackled bazaar next to the Azad Park of the Jama Masjid area was named Mina Bazaar in the 1960s, though now it has only dhabas (relocated after Indira Gandhi’s Emergency), including one that claimed to be that of the famed Maseeta Kebab’s, most of whose descendants migrated to Pakistan. In the aftermath of the Partition they continued to send kebabs in mud handis by air for special customers in Delhi but not any more. Interestingly, Ghalib was very fond of kebabs made by Maseeta, the counterpart of which in Lucknow is called Tunda. After the devastation of 1857, Ghalib wrote to a friend in Jaunpur that Shahjahanabad had become such a despicable place that dogs growled about in Maseeta’s shop (below the steps of the Jama Masjid), as the kebabia had stopped using it for fear of the avenging British.
But to go back to Chhatta Chowk, where Shah Jahan had intentioned the bazaar to be a weekly market where the ladies of his harem would buy and sell precious articles and those of daily use, particularly ornaments with which women are fond of adorning themselves with. The bazaar would be held every Thursday, a day that most Muslims revere as one reserved for offering fatiha at the graves of their near and dear ones, and also making supplications at the shrines of saints, 22 of whom lie buried in Delhi, and are as venerated as the Khwajas. However some Sayyid’s graves were also the venue of devotions like people lighting agarbattis at them and offering niyaz on nuktidanas (small yellow sweet balls), sugar bubble-like batashas and less sweet white elaichi-danas. These were distributed to those present, among them a lot of children. The practice continues today.
Jumairaat, preceding Jumma, the day on which man is said to have been formed out of clay by
God, was picked by the emperor for the weekly bazaar in keeping with tradition. On that day, gates of the fort were closed even to the nobles, petitioners, and military commanders, as also the ulema, and women supervised all the arrangements.
Jahanara and her sister Roshanara, the daughters of Shah Jahan, led the other princesses to the Mina Bazaar, where also congregated the residents of Suhagpura (abode of royal widows and their progeny in the Lal Qila). Princes too were not allowed, though some of them sneaked in or peeped from behind trelliswork, the ornamental jails adorning the walls. Some of the sellers were from Chandni Chowk, like the women dealing in bangles and bindis for the forehead, as also henna for the hands and hair. To attract their customers these women had coined a flattering lingo like, ‘these bangles would suit the wrists of a princess, even though they are made of glass, not gold, silver, or diamonds, but their value increases when they are worn by royal hands’. Such praise did not fail to find its mark. Remember royalty, used to articles of gold, sometimes hankered for those of baser material and so glass bangles found enough customers who liked the jingle they made while exquisite hands moved in rapid gestures, such as washing the face, bathing, cuddling a lover, or beckoning a kaneez or maid, of whom there were any number. These women too exercised great influence and were not devoid of honour even after death as is evident from the tomb of the maids (Sahelion ka Burj) near the entrance gate of the Taj Mahal.
The Mina Bazaar also was the place where romance sometimes blossomed. Shah Jahan, as Prince Khurram, had his first glimpse of Mumtaz Mahal (Arjumand Bano) at the bazaar in the Agra Fort. After that he persuaded his stepmother, Nur Jahan, to help him gain the object of his desire, who happened to be her niece, being the daughter of her brother, Asaf Khan. At the time of the latter Mughals, many a prince found his sweetheart at Chhatta Chowk during the Thursday bazaar. Mohammad Shah Rangila (1719-1748) often sported a sensual kaneez and she ended up becoming his concubine. But after Nadir Shah’s invasion in 1739 things changed and instead of the laughter of princesses and their coquettish maids, the noted poet Mir Taqi Mir only heard the sound of weeping shehzadis on the verge of starvation. However, when things returned to normal, Mohammed Shah and his successors (up to the time of Bahadur Shah Zafar), continued to patronize the royal market until the ‘Mutiny’ ended Mughal rule and British soldiers began disfiguring Chhatta Chowk. Its much battered vaulted roof was replaced subsequently and it is only now that it would perhaps get back its original shape. Meanwhile the Mina Bazaar of Agra Fort lies lifeless and is not a shopping arcade like its counterpart in Delhi.
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Four Stalwarts Delhi has lost
n the death of Alfred J. Edwin and Prof M. Ruthnaswamy, Delhi lost two of its stalwarts four decades ago. Edwin was a walking dictionary on the historical monuments of Delhi and specialized in the Mughal and British periods. You could see him browsing through old manuscripts and coming up with something new every time he wrote an article for the Statesman Sunday magazine. As a matter of fact, there was a time when he and Charles Fabri did most of the writing for the magazine. Fabri, of course, was more critic than historian.
But Edwin’s forte was the light historical sketch. The loves and lives of the legendary Col. James Skinner of Skinner’s Horse, and of how he vowed to build a church in Kashmiri Gate when his life was saved on the battlefield by a cobbler woman; the doings in the Red Fort of Muhammad Shah, nicknamed Rangele Pia or the colourful lover; the death of Shah Alam, and Jahandar Shah’s love for a courtesan whose friend sold the sweetest melons in Delhi. These were the anecdotes he churned out for the benefit of Sunday magazine readers week after week.
Ruthnaswamy came from the South, but had made his base in Delhi, thanks to his zeal for reform in the Christian community. A colleague vividly remembers his first visit to the Taj when he could not be photographed against the monument. The little boy who held the camera while his photographer-father was conversing with the ‘missionary from the South’ had kept himself amused by turning the roll screw until the entire film had been exposed and nothing was left in the camera to commemorate the event.
Ruthnaswamy was a stickler for language, particularly English and perpetuated the dress and morals of a Victorian gentleman even while in the thick of politics. He loved the North for the contrast it offered to the South and he loved Delhi too, for it was here that he gave the benefit of his eloquence to Parliament.
The Taj can be an obsession. For almost everybody, it is its beauty that makes it so. But for at least one celebrity it was its plumbing or lack of it. And for some, especially of late, it is its history. Was it designed by a Rajput or a Mughal? For Hari Inder Singh Kanwar who lived and died in Defence Colony, everything about the Taj was an obsession – its art, plumbing, history, even its mathematics physics, and chemistry. His monumental work on the mausoleum took over fifteen years to complete. Kanwar’s belief was that the Taj was essentially a Mughal monument with a fair blending of Hindu and Muslim art. He agreed that near where it stood once was the garden of Raja Man Singh, with a mansion to the west. The mansion had been probably destroyed to make room for the mausoleum. Kanwar had collected notes from all over the world, including the India Office Library in London, the Jesuit Research Institute in Rome and the Central Asian Archives in Moscow and Tashkent for his study. Not only this, he photographed every feature of the monument and measured even the shadows of the minarets and the main dome to emphasize the symmetrical beauty of the Taj and the underlying Muslim plan with its conception of paradise.
Kanwar had started his career as the pilot of the Raja of Faridkot’s private plane. He had taken his training at the Kuala Lumpur Flying Club at the age of sixteen. He claimed the distinction of having been the country’s youngest commercial pilot in 1935 when he was twenty. That year he had won the Carl Naver Challenge Cup.
Then Second World War broke out and for six years he served in the armed forces. He later switched his attention to history and the result was the publication of his Memories of Dum Dum in the Statesman. Other historical studies followed including such intriguing ones as Geography of the Taj, Mathematics of the Taj, Physics of the Taj and Chemistry of the Taj. That is monumental work indeed on a monument.
Mir Mushtaq Ahmed was one of the few leaders who identified themselves completely with the capital. After spending his childhood in Shimla, he came to Delhi in 1924 and settled in an old house in the Jama Masjid area. He loved the place so much that even when he became Delhi’s first Chief Executive Councilor, he refused to move to the official residence offered to him in a posh locality. In his last years, he moved to the house of his adopted son in Saket, but never forgot old Delhi till he was alive.
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Graveyards of Delhi
ow sleep the great and not-so-great who have been part of Delhi’s history at one point or another? Restfully in most places, including Qutab Sahib’s Dargah, Humayun’s Tomb, and Nizamuddin Dargah. The grave of Murad Bakht, wife of Shah Alam II in the Qutab Sahib’s Dargah at Mehrauli is hardly visited by people now. According to INTACH (Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage), it was part of a mosque once but is now a residence where people cook food, wash utensils, clothes, and then spend a restful night. Built in 1800, six years before the death of Shah Alam II, also known as the blind emperor, it has two other graves near it. It is not known who they belong to. But it can be conjectured that those who lie buried there must have been relatives of the last real Mughal ruler, probably his daughters or concubines. Lal Bangla (where the Delhi Golf Club is situated) is where the graves of his mother and Lal Kanwar, the beloved of Emperor Jahandar Shah, are located.
Not far away in Mehrauli is another graveyard where three nawabs of Loharu were buried, as they were important personages during Mughal times. The probable dates of their burial are 1802-1803. The enclosure has fifteen graves in all, with arches on the western and eastern walls with fluted columns.
On the corner of Zafar Mahal is a graveyard where Bahadur Shah Zafar want
ed to be buried. Among those interred here are Bahadur Shah I, also known as Shah Alam I, who was the eldest son of Aurangzeb. INTACH identifies the other graves as those of Shah Alam II, son of Alamgir II, of Akbar Shah Sani, Zafar’s father, and other notables. Chihaltan Chihalman in the DDA Park at Mehrauli contains the graves of the Abdals, who were saints of Afghan descent, and according to some, members of the Abdali clan, to which Ahmad Shah Abdali, the general and successor of Nadir Shah also belonged. The graveyard has a hemispherical dome and a narrow gateway. The arch contains inscriptions from the Quran. The possible date of the monument’s construction is the Lodhi period. What does Chihaltan Chihalman mean? Some conjecture that it is an alliteration of Chialis or 46, which must have been an important date for the Sufi Abdals, though some contend that there might have been 46 such saints who are commemorated here, but according to Sadia Dehlvi the number of the buried is 40, also a mystical number in the Sufi service. In Chirag Delhi, near Bahlol Lodhi’s tomb, is an enclosure which is said to contain the graves of the ministers of the first Lodhi ruler, whose tomb was built by his son, Nizam Khan Sikandar Lodhi in 1488.
In Sarai Shahji, Malviya Nagar is the grave enclosure of Farid Murtaza Khan’s tomb. Farid held the rank of mansabdar of 5,000 horses during the reigns of Akbar and Jahangir and also served as the Governor of Gujarat. The nobleman was credited with the construction of several sarais and those who lie buried near him were his kinsmen.